While we are going to list the best WordPress themes in 2021 shortly, we would like to hand you a checklist so that you can choose any theme that you like, and it will serve you better than anything else. One of the best free themes is the one supplied with your default WordPress installation, the Twenty Twenty-One. It has more than enough features to get you started on the right foot.
Checklist For Choosing The Best Theme:
- Does it come with a drag-and-drop page builder?
- Does it offer Search Engine Optimization?
- Is the theme Responsive and Retina Display ready?
- Does it offer lazy loading and pre-fetching?
- Does It support “Tags” integration?
If the answers to all the above questions are “Yes” regarding the theme you chose, go for it. If it doesn’t support one or two of the items on the Best WordPress Themes Checklist, see our reasoning below and decide for yourself if it is ok to compromise on that specific feature. Nevertheless, the themes we have shortlisted and proposed offer 100% checklist compatibility.
Why is it necessary for the theme to be responsive in 2021?
According to Google, more than half of the Internet traffic comes from mobile devices. This includes your smartphones and tablets. Smartphones and tablets both come in many sizes, and at the same time, one mobile device can have at least two different screen sizes depending on its orientation, Portrait, and Landscape. This much fluctuation and difference in screen sizes can absolutely ruin your website design if it isn’t responsive. A responsive website is one that can change and adjust its size according to the user’s screen size. This allows for a universal website design that looks perfect irrespective of the device on which the site is viewed.
What’s the importance of a drag-and-drop website builder?
Not everyone is going to be tech-savvy. In fact, WordPress is the preferred go-to platform of webmasters who do not know programming and UI/UX design. To tell you the truth, I – being in the web development field for almost a decade – would take ease over coding 10 out of 10 times. (Does that make me a bad programmer? Nooooo!) A website builder is an easy-to-use tool that makes it easy for anyone to design and build excellent webpages. It assists seasoned website designers to save almost half the time required to create a stunning website.
Search Engine Optimization:
That’s a given. Any theme that does not offer SEO should be discarded irrespective of the checks it marks on our checklist. Without SEO, no one can find your website, nor can it grow. Yes, you may be able to bring in traffic through ads and social media, but what happens when you stop paying for ads and stop sharing your content on social media? Your traffic will drop, and so will your sales. SEO is important and essential.
How fast is the theme?
The theme you are eyeing should be optimized for speed. Yes, there are many speed optimizations and caching plugins available for WordPress sites, but built-in speed optimization offers better results when compared. For one, a theme with speed optimization features will not break if you turn on tons of caching and minification features because the theme creator must have configured fail-safes and thresholds. Another thing is the ease of lazy loading images and other content, and also pre-fetching works best if offered by the theme itself.
Tags and Integration options:
Growing eCommerce and the need for measuring website performance requires using tags or integrations with other platforms, like, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and Pinterest tags. You can integrate these if you know how to program and play around with the backend of WordPress, or you can install plugins to do so. However, adding more plugins puts excessive load on the servers and increases processing time. So, it’s better to have some sort of built-in integration mechanism to accommodate these tags and pixels.
Best WordPress Themes In 2021
Avada:
Avada theme ticks all the items on our checklist. It has everything we want in a theme fit for 2021, hence we dub Avada as the Best WordPress Theme in 2021. Avada introduced its new visual editor that can be used to make changes to your live website. Also, it has speed and search engine optimizations built-in to it. A single Avada license costs $60 on Theme Forest and is the number 1 best seller for 8 consecutive years.
Divi:
Divi is a close second when it comes to ranking the best WordPress themes in 2021. The only downside to Divi is its pricing plans. It costs $89 for a year and $249 for lifetime access. After one-year, premium support and updates will come to an end. That’s a bummer; however, Divi makes up for it by offering unlimited website licenses while Avada’s license is for one website only.
Flatsome:
Some may argue that this theme does not qualify as a third position holder for the best WordPress themes in 2021 but listen to our argument first. We are placing it as third because of its ease of use, price, being lightweight, fast, and having great features. This theme is primarily meant for making eCommerce sites. With this theme, you can argue with anyone using Shopify that you can build a WordPress eCommerce store quickly with this as well. It comes with a UX builder with all blocks necessary to make a stunning online store. While at the same time, Flatsome supports Search Engine Optimization, Tags integration, seamless Instagram integration, lazy loading, and many more. We were sold on two features: One, its ease of installation, and two, its prompt updates to accommodate any changes and WooCommerce updates. Its license costs $59 for unlimited updates but use on one site only.